A Lofty Perch Fit for a Royal Museum at Westminster Abbey

LONDON — When Prince William, an heir to the British throne, married Kate Middleton at Westminster Abbey in April 2011, the service was conducted by the Very Rev. John R. Hall, the dean of Westminster.

“Some 2.4 billion people were said to have watched it, which is about one in three of the world’s population,” Dean Hall said in an interview at his spacious windowed office next to the abbey. “We’d done quite a lot of work preparing it, with the main participants as well, and the bridesmaids and the pageboys. I expected to feel very, very nervous.

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Prince William married Kate Middleton in a ceremony at Westminster Abbey on April 29, 2011.Credit
Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

“In fact, it was lovely. It felt very appropriate, and just right. I felt in the end quite possibly relaxed.”

The marriage license from that much-watched royal wedding is among the showpieces of a new museum, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries, opening in June, 70 feet above the floor of the abbey in a 13th-century arcade, or triforium. The space, once used for storage, has been off limits to the public for 700 years.

Queen Elizabeth II was married and crowned there, and the funeral for her daughter-in-law Diana, Princess of Wales, was held there. Yet visitors shouldn’t expect too much memorabilia connected to the current royal family among the more than 300 objects on display.

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The triforium at Westminster Abbey before work began to convert the space into The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries.Credit
Alan Williams, via Westminster Abbey

“It’s not about the House of Windsor,” Susan Jenkins, the galleries’ curator, said. “This exhibition is really about the history of the royal involvement with the abbey.”

She received visitors in a vast library that was originally a monks’ dormitory, filled with padlocked bookshelves dating to 1623.

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The monk's shoe after conservation.Credit
via Westminster Abbey

The abbey was founded as a Benedictine monastery in 960 A.D., and housed a community of monks for more than 600 years. The first major church was built on the site in the mid-11th century; monarchs have been crowned there ever since.

The abbey is outside the jurisdiction of the Church of England and is responsible only to the monarch. With no state, church or royal funding, it is supported by entry fees (an adult ticket costs about $30, or £22) and donations. Last year, the abbey attracted 1.3 million visitors and 300,000 worshipers.

The museum will be accessible only through a Gothic-style tower being built outside the abbey. The entire cost of the museum project, about $31.6 million (£22.9 million), has been raised through donations, including support from the American Fund for Westminster Abbey.

When Dean Hall was appointed in 2006, the church archaeologist told him about the great unused space. Three years later, Dean Hall drew up a proposal for a museum, then spoke to the queen about setting it up and naming it to honor her 60th year on the British throne. She agreed.

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The Litlyngton Missal is a 14th century service book made for the Abbey’s high altar. Pictured, the Crucifixion page.Credit
via Westminster Abbey

When work started and floorboards were lifted, “dust and detritus” was found, Dean Hall said, including 30,000 fragments of stained glass from windows “which had been blown in at different times,” a church warden’s 18th-century clay pipe, and coronation tickets from the 18th and 19th centuries that people “had just torn up and thrown down.”

Also retrieved from another corner of the abbey was a 14th-century monk’s shoe, which will be part of the museum. “It looked a bit squashed,” Ms. Jenkins said. “It’s been conserved and humidified, and padded out so it looks shoelike.”

The queen and her entourage are, naturally, present in the collections. In a huge portrait by the Australian painter Ralph Heimans, she stands on the spot of her coronation in the abbey, looking contemplative.

Queen Victoria is commemorated with the footstool she used during her coronation at the age of 18. The five-hour ceremony had not been rehearsed, and it showed. The coronation ring was squeezed on the wrong finger, an aging peer tripped down the steps as he paid his respects, and Victoria was mistakenly told the ceremony was over when it wasn’t. She left her seat, then returned to it.

“After that, there was a decision to rehearse in advance,” Ms. Jenkins said. Starting in 1937, rehearsals used replicas of the crown jewels. Those replicas will be on view in the new galleries.

Far more priceless treasures will also be displayed. They include the Westminster Retable, England’s oldest altarpiece, dating to the 13th century; the Litlyngton Missal, a magnificent illuminated 14th-century service book with instructions on celebrating Mass throughout the year; and a series of effigies of deceased kings and queens: wood or wax sculptures that were made just before or just after their deaths, and placed on their coffins in funeral processions.

Will the museum always be known as the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries? The name “very well reflects the queen’s close involvement with the abbey and her patronage, and the ongoing patronage of the House of Windsor,” Ms. Jenkins said, but she added, “It might evolve over time.”

A version of this article appears in print on March 15, 2018, on Page F30 of the New York edition with the headline: A Lofty Perch Fit for a Royal Museum. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe